ESSAY Xli. 433 swift arrow, or the fly of a jack. And as for exceeding stow motions, as the hand of a watch, it makes no impression of its motion at all upon the outward organs of sense, or at least so. very weak an impression as that it is not communicated distinctly to the inward fibres of the brain, or common sensarium, where- soever that be ; and consequently, the soul can have no sensa- tion or idea of it ; 'I'uus the motions, which are exceeding swift, or exceeding slow, are not distinctly discerned. But in a sepa- rate spirit, or its a spirit united to such matter whose motions might be much swifter than tire fibres of our nerves or brain, it may be possible for us to have many successive ideas in tire time wherein now we have but one. And then the duration, or time, might bemeasured by those spirits, by theusual swiftness of the succession oftheir ideas, as well as ours are now, where the usual succession is more slow. SECT. IIL-Of Infinity. -IN thisseventeenth chapter of infinity, Mr. Locke is ex- ceeding large, because it is a notion that has been the spring of so many long and endless debates among the learned, and there- fore he is pardonable, if by a repetition of the same things in copious language, he endeavours to impress his thoughts upon our minds : His notions of infinite as an ever growing, and not a positive complete idea, are of admirable use to stop and put an end to those wranglings about infinity, in time, extension, swift and slow motion, division, number, &c. which have abounded among some writers. And let us chiefly make this use of this consideration of infinity, via. to spew us how very narrow and bounded our understandings are, and with what an awful sense of the weakness and frailty of our own thoughts and judgments we should reason about an infinite God and his infi- nite affairs. We finite limited beings soon lose ourselves among infinites, whether great or small, till we retreat within our own bounds, and reason upon things which are made for our grasp of thought. The great incomprehensible being has reserved perfect, positive infinity to himself, and though there may be some posi- tions determined with justice and certainty about it, yet the less we mingle it with our arguments, we are perhaps the more se- cure from error. SECT. IV.-Of Power.Book II. chap. 21. MR. LOCKE in his 21st chapter of the 2nd book con- cerning power, sect. 4. supposes that the idea of active power is touch more borrowed front spirits than from bodies ; and is far better derived from the mind's reflection on its own operations, and its counnand over the body to put the limbs of it in motion, than it can be from any external sensation whereby we behold one body having peculiar influences over other bodies, to make og3 t;'jj ¡i11
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